Most of what I have seen hasn't been outright selling ceremonies and often the problems I've seen aren't complete frauds . It just seems when native traditions get taken out of the balance provided by a knowledgable Native community things go wrong and people get hurt .
I think the main common denominator with all these situations is that these people were not authorized to lead ceremonies for the Native community they originated in , or for the Native communtiy they were supposedly taught by , ( almost always this tracks back to Lakota )
While some of these people may have learned from some good teachers , in all these cases the way these people became empowered with the responsibility of being a Spiritual leader , was through the recognition of a mainly non native or PODIA audience .
Perople who decide they want to be medicine people , are often attracted by the power , prestige and attention . Some mean well but don't know what they are doing a lot of the time . Others are just con artists and bottom feeders . While some of these people may do some good , they also can do a lot of damage .
Deleting / altering some details to protect peoples privacy really takes a lot of the punch out of these incidents . What gets posted in NAFPS is only the tip of the ice burg of the abuse that happens ...
Some of the things I have seen ;
I've seen many people who attend ceremonies who have an experince they don't know how to integrate , because they don't have the cultural background or the support of a traditional community . It's not uncommon for these people to go through deep personal struggles . These people often do really silly things , from trying to be Indian when they aren't , by dying their hair and surrounding themselves with dream catchers and pictures of wolves , or creating a New Age buisness that includes a few Native props or "teachings" .
I have seen four people who attended some sort of ceremonies, who afterwards went totally off the deep end . One person who was Native who got involved with questionable people they did not know , who were using some kind of traditional Medicine, and afterwards they got so confused they ended up needing to be instituationalized for awhile . In this situation this person did have their families traditional understanding and support , but they had gotten involved with people and traditions they didn't know .
Three of these people who were non native went delusional after attending ceremonies , one imaginging they were descended from a famous Indian went around in nothing but a blanket until they were picked up by police . The other two just annoyed their communities and families for months with longwinded delusions about what powerful medicine/ shamanic powers they were .
I know of two instances where people who had been abused as children were completely devastated to learn the "Elder" they became involved with outside of a native community was a convicted pedophile , who was not well thought of in their own community .
I know four instances where the "Medicine men" who were leading ceremonies outside the native community were habitually violent . One woman required time in a hospital to recover .
I know two instances where women were sexually fondled after being told it was part of the ceremony " healing ".
The thing that is really devasting is that when these abuses happen , people who are the followers of these unhealthy people don't want to believe anything bad about their 'medicine man' and in every case i have seen the abuse is denied and the victim is blamed, not the abuser . Many Native and mixed blood people who are disconnected from their families and tribes got disconnected through abuse , so a repeat of abuse together with denial and rejection of the truth , can be completely devastating .
I saw one instance where a woman with a health problem read a book by a popular well known New Age author who made up "traditional Native teachings". This woman believed this book and she believed her illness was someone attacking her energetic body , so she tried to deal with it 'Spiritualy ' . When
she at last went to a doctor it was too late and she died .
A person I knew went to a medicine woman who charged for healing ,because of anxiety attacks . The fake medicine woman shamanicly journeied and found a alleged "memory" of this persons relative sexually abusing them . When the anxiety didn't go away , this fraud did another shamanic journy found another relative who had abused the person seeking help . This went on and on until this fraud had the person conviced their whole family had sexually abused them . Years later and with more competant psychological help the person came to understand it had only been one relative who abused them , but in the meantime many of the family members who had been acused of horrible things had died having being wrongly accused of abuse they never commited , and the rest of their family hates them for making false accustions , and now this person has to live with that .
I knew a Native person in the city who was disconnected from their family and tribe . They were suffering from depression and grew up in an alchoholic family . They began participating in ceremonies with someone they thought was an Elder . After a couple years the "Elder" left town after stealing a large sum of money from someone . Which left the depressed woman even more depressed and feeling cynical and ambivalent about the traditions and Elders in general.
I knew a mixed blood Grandma who had never known much about her roots and she was wanting to introduce her grandkids to traditions . She breifly got sucked into a non native woman promising to teach traditions and get you a power animal for $$$ Once grandma realized it was scam she gave up trying to get the grandkids in touch with their traditions because there is too many con artists out there .
I know an mixblood person who's family has continuously lived within a native community and participated in tribal traditions Now when this person tries to participate in the Sundance they have to contend with constant hostility from some other dancers and elders , who come from somewhere else and don't know his family , because he doesn't look Native . The bad feelings all these frauds and exploiters create affects people on the margins or who look more non native. They get blamed for the abuse of traditions, even if they have never done anything like this themselves .
I know sincere mixed blood people who have difficulty finding out anything about their family , even though their family is known to the tribe ,because so many people are abusing this information to try and "get" something .
I know people in Native communities who have stopped attending community events because it is too hard to participate in a ceremony when known frauds and exploiters have pushed their way into leadership positions .
Much of these bad experinces did not just affect the individual who made the bad descision to trust these dubious characters . The persons family , community and friends all get draged through it .
The true traditional Elders are awesome and inspirational human beings . And it isn't all about ceremonies . It is in the way they carry themselves and live their lives . All the true traditional elders and medicine people i have known have been humble . They avoid the spot light , expect when something needs to be done that requires they step into it . I have never seen a true traditional person advertise themselves in any way, or engage in self promotion . Traditional leaders tend to consider the welfare of others before they consider the welfare of themselves . They tend to have a deep understanding of what is going on from the point of view of the person they are communicating with and they get to the point . Traditional leaders are self disciplined and tend to be gentle , kind and polite and respectful , even when people do not deserve this , in yet they usually manage to do this while being entirely honest and truthful . Traditional leaders are suprisingly intellegent and tend to see the big picture . This expanded vision causes their actions to truely be for the good of the People . Traditional Elders give us a sense of direction and a inspire a sense of faith and the aspirition to mature into the goodness we all have as our potential.
For anyone who knows the power and goodness of true Elders and traditional leaders , it is doubly painful to see the traditions they carry corupted into a tool to take advantage of people .
The cause of this coruption gaining the power to do this damage , is that people do not seek out and recognize proper tribal authorities when looking to learn about their heritage , together with the willingness of a non native audience to support exploiters and frauds because it appeals to some romantic fantasy of "Indian wisdom" .
One of the common patterns of colonization has been the failure of colonists to recognize the authorities who were selected from within the Native community to represent the community interests. Instead , non native people all too often have only recognized those who they think will benifit nonnative intrests . This lack of respect for the voices of the true Spiritual leaders within native communities , is very much the same racist attitudes that led to genocide in the past and that continue to lead to genocide today .
